When you have a scene as new and constantly changing as eSports, situations are going to crop up that cause debate over what the definition of "cheating" actual entails. Now, at Dreamhack, we have a new case where a team used an in-game map exploit to rocket their way to victory, only to be met with derision by fans for employing the tactic, and which eventually led them to forfeit the series.

Dreamhack in Sweden hosts the world's largest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, and the matches in question occurred during a quarterfinal match between Swedish team Fnatic and French team LDLC. Fnatic was staring down the barrel of a nine-game deficit, and knew they would have to get creative in order to make a comeback.

In Fnatic's next ten games, they employed a "boost" to reach an otherwise inaccessible portion of the map. A "boost" in Counter-Strike is when players use each other as springboard to jump to hard to reach locations, a legitimate tactic in the game that's used frequently. But in this case, they were using it to boost one player to a glitched-out portion of the map where they couldn't be killed and had a full view of the entire map. Knowing exactly where the other team was at all times gave them a significant advantage and they won ten straight to pull off a huge comeback upset over the French team.

Naturally, LDLC immediately filled a motion that what Fnatic did was illegal, but this is an issue with eSports. Fnatic wasn't hiding this, and the fact that they were doing it could be seen by everyone watching. But their argument was that it was the game that was at fault, not their team, and that just because they discovered and used an existing exploit, that didn't mean they were doing anything wrong.

That line of logic didn't last long, however. At first, Dreamhack declared that the entire series would be replayed starting at 0-0 in order to have a fresh slate. But that still didn't sit well with LDLC who was up nine games when the exploit was used. Eventually public pressure or a simple change of conscience made Fnatic change their tune and they forfeited the series so LDLC now moves on to the semi-finals without issue.

This kind of thing doesn't happen too often in eSports, as you seldom see glitches and exploits pulled out of a hat to be used to orchestrate an otherwise impossible comeback. For example, I've never seen a Starcraft player glitch out of the map to find a mineral node that gives him infinite money, or a League of Legends team band together to break the game to cause the immediate destruction of their opponent's nexus. Those may sound silly, but "god view mode" in CounterStrike is practically as good as any of those game-breaking glitches would be, as evidenced by a preposterous ten-game comeback.

I think both Dreamhack and fans were in the right here to immediately crack down on this kind of thing even if "using exploit 3AA356" wasn't an exact passage in the rulebook. Even Fnatic figured out they really didn't have a leg to stand on in the end, and I have to think they never really thought they'd get away with it.

eSports will always have its challenges as it continues to grow and evolve, and we've just seen a rather interesting one unfold here. In the end, wrongs were righted and it will probably be a while until you see a major team trying to use such an obvious exploit in matches again.